Remembering Patrice Lumumba: The 20th Century’s “Most Important” Assassination
Tuesday, 17 January 2012, marked 50 years since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected president of an independent Congo.
Lumumba’s death in 1961 was the result of two related plots by the US and Belgian governments and his diposal during the tumultuous Congo Crisis after which Mobutu Sese Seko seized power.
Not only did the Congo Crisis lead to the assassination of Lumumba, but it also resulted in the conspiracy-laden death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld following his attempts to mediate. Hammarskjöld’s death is explored and the mystery surrounding it revealed in Susan Williams’ Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, released by Jacana this month.
While the assassinations of Lumumba and Hammarskjöld are in many ways connected, Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila, has called the assassination of Lumumba “the most important” of the last century, following from the words of Belgian author, Ludo De Witte.
In an article in the Guardian, Nzongola-Ntalaja notes that this is because of the greater context in which the assassination took place, its lasting impact on Congolese politics, and Lumumba’s remembrance as a nationalist hero:
Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 50 years ago today, on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.
Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as “the most important assassination of the 20th century”. The assassination’s historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba’s overall legacy as a nationalist leader.
In a second article in the Guardian, Victoria Brittain reflects on the assassination of at least five other leaders of African independence movements including Félix Moumié and Amilcar Cabral:
Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of newly independent Congo, was the second of five leaders of independence movements in African countries to be assassinated in the 1960s by their former colonial masters, or their agents.
A sixth, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, was ousted in a western-backed coup in 1966, and a seventh, Amilcar Cabral, leader of the west African liberation movement against Portugal of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde or PAIGC) in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, was assassinated in 1973.
Book details
- The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
EAN: 9781842770528
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- Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa by Susan Williams
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EAN: 9781431402984
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- The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo de Witte
EAN: 9781859846186
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Photo courtesy the Guardian
Apr
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